Shopify quietly laid off employees in its support division this week, five people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. It was not immediately clear how many employees lost their jobs, but one person estimated that it was at least a dozen.
Shopify's support teams troubleshoot issues for the millions of merchants who use the platform to sell products.
Employees who were affected by the job cuts lost access to company systems during or immediately after a brief meeting with HR, making it difficult for them to ascertain how many of their coworkers had also lost their jobs.
Shopify representatives did not immediately return a request for comment on the layoffs.
Shopify's support division has undergone many changes in recent years.
In early 2023, the company began "Code Yellow," a project aimed at improving customer service levels that leaders said had "deteriorated beyond acceptable ranges." As part of that project, it embraced using generative AI to handle some tasks that support employees had previously done, saying the technology had helped to "minimize toil, help us be more efficient and improve merchant experience." In 2024, company leaders told employees a reorganization of the division would be necessary to fix its ratio of managers to "crafters," which is Shopify's term for individual contributors.
Shopify has also continued to hire third-party vendors — some in other countries including the Philippines and some in Canada — to assist with customer-service tickets, which employees said has contributed to a decline in overall quality in response.
The support division has also seen a lot of turnover in its management ranks, with former leaders Glen Worthington, Clovis Cuqui, and Jen Bebb all departing Shopify in 2024.
Shopify conducted two rounds of mass layoffs in the years after a pandemic-era boom. In July 2022, it laid off 10% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 employees, and in May 2023, it cut an additional 20% of staff while also selling off its logistics business.
Three people told BI that the company has quietly laid off workers several times since then, in a manner similar to this week's layoffs.
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